You call it a bit crazy! It is absolutely crazy! And I have to be a trickster with you. Try to understand. If somebody is in an illusion, you cannot bring him out by talking about the truth. An illusion can be destroyed only by another illusion. Poison is to be destroyed by other poison. If you have a thorn in your foot, another thorn will be needed to take it out.
All Buddhas are tricksters. You don't need reality; reality is already there. You just need a shock so that you can open your eyes, so that your eyes pop open and you can see. You just need a trick.
Somebody is fast asleep. What do you do? You shake him, you put an alarm, and when the bell starts ringing, what are you doing? You are simply creating a disturbance. That's what all devices are. You are fast asleep. Not that reality is not there -- reality surrounds you -- but you are fast asleep.
I am not here to give you the truth. Nobody can give you the truth. Truth you already have, but somehow you have tricked yourself into lies. Now you will need bigger, stronger lies to crush your lies. All philosophies are lies, devices, to help you to come out of your lies.
A man was brought to me. He was very much afraid of ghosts. They were just in his imagination -- they are always in your imagination -- but just to say to him, 'This is your imagination,' was not going to help. Everybody was saying that to him. 'You are just imagining. Where are the ghosts? We don't see them.' And he was seeing them continuously; they were surrounding him. Somebody was standing on the right, somebody was standing on the left, somebody was standing at the back -- they were following him everywhere. It was impossible for him to sleep, it was impossible to be alone, because they were torturing him. Now what to do?
Everybody had been saying to him that this was imagination. The doctor had said to him that this was imagination, the psychiatrist had said that nothing could be done, he was simply imagining, he had no real problem. But whether he had a real problem or not, you cannot deny his problem. He had a problem --
real, unreal, is immaterial. For him it was real. He was suffering; his suffering was real.
When he came to me, I looked to his right and I said, 'Perfectly right, the man is there!' He smiled at me; I was the first man who understood him. And I said, 'By your left side also I can see people, and they are following you. How do you survive with so many ghosts?'
He said, 'Nobody listens to me' -- but he relaxed. He touched my feet. He said, 'You are the only person, otherwise I go on proving and nobody listens. They say, "It is all imagination. You are in a sort of delusion. Drop imagination. There are nothing like ghosts."'
But I said, 'I can see. Who are these people?' His father was with him, his wife was with him, and they became afraid when I said, 'Yes, they are there.' And he said to his father, 'Now, listen to what Osho is saying. And you were thinking I am a fool.' Now he gained his confidence.
What I was saying was a lie; there were no ghosts -- but that is not the point. The man was suffering from lack of confidence, the man was suffering from fear. Now, just by accepting his lie... I am also a liar, I am saying, 'Yes, they are there'... I helped him to regain his confidence. He looked better, he looked stronger.
Maybe the ghosts are there, but he is not wrong. Maybe the ghosts are still there, but he is not a fool, not an idiot. And I told him, 'Nothing to be worried about. There are methods; we will deal with them.'
He said, 'That's what I am asking people. Help me! Give me something to deal with them.' 'Don't be worried. And as I can see, they are not stronger than you.' Immediately his height was greater than before. He took a deep inhalation, his spine became erect. And I gave him just an ordinary locket, nothing in it, empty, and I told him, 'You just keep it with you. And whenever you feel they are there, you just hold it in your hand, and they will start becoming afraid; they will be frightened and they will start rushing. Don't be worried, just hold it in your hand.'
He tried and he laughed. He said, 'They are doing that. They are running away
from me. Now I'm not afraid.'
Just two weeks time and he was a normal man. When he was normal and the ghosts had disappeared and he had regained his normality, I told him, 'Now, give me that locket, because it has nothing in it.'
He said, 'What do you mean?'
I said, 'There were no ghosts. The medicine was as false as the disease.' But then he could understand. He laughed, he said,' But you tricked me out of it. If you had said the same thing to me fifteen days ago, I would have never listened to you, but now I know, and if you say, I believe.' I opened the locket; it was empty. I said, 'You can see; it is just empty. Just the idea that you have the power has helped. Now I would not like you to carry this locket forever, because now this will become a disease. If someday it is lost, you
will start trembling, and those ghosts which have gone will come back because the locket is lost.'
All your illusions are just illusions. They are illusions. You are not really ill; you have imagined illness. You have not really fallen away from god; you have only dreamed about it. You have never been expelled from the garden of Eden; you have only thought it that way. You are still in the garden of Eden. You still exist
in the very heart of god. There is no way to get out of it. It is just your dream. How to destroy a dream? One has to be very very skillful about it. You cannot just say to people, 'This is your dream'. They won't listen. Their eyes are so full of dream they won't be able to see. You have to accept their reality, only then can
you help.
I have heard:
Once upon a time a young woman dreamed that a handsome prince rode up to her, scooped her up in his arms, kissed her, and rode off into the night with her. 'Goodness!' she cried in a frightened voice. 'Where are you taking me?' 'You tell me,' answered the prince sharply. 'It is your dream.'
It is your illusion that you have gone astray, now I have to bring you home. It is your dream that you have forgotten god, and I have to remind you. It is your dream that you think that you are miserable, and I have to remind you that you are not.
But just by saying that this is all maya, illusion, you will not be helped. I have to be very skillful about it. I have to persuade you. I have to be really a salesman. I have to persuade you by and by. Hurry will not help. Impatience will not help. If I say too much to you, you will not be able to absorb it.
One man asked me once, 'Osho, you go on talking every day, morning and evening. How is it possible?'
I said, 'All lies! So what is the difficulty in it? If I am talking only truth, then there is not that much truth to talk every morning, every evening. That much truth does not exist!'
You have some lie in your life; I create another lie, an antidote. Once both the lies come in contact, they cross each other, they cancel each other. You are left with the truth.
I am not saying the truth. If you listen to me, my lie will kill your lie and the truth will be left behind.
Truth is there. I cannot give it to you. Nobody can give it to you. You are truth, so all that I can do is to create antidote lies for you -- that's what all religions are.
The day you will understand, you will laugh.
When Bodhidharma attained to his enlightenment, it is said he started laughing. The laughter was mad, he could not contain. He was rolling on the ground. Other bodhisattvas gathered, other seekers gathered, and said, 'What is happening to you?'
He said, 'It is absolutely ridiculous. I cannot believe that truth was never lost, that we had only imagined that we had lost. And then comes this Buddha, this trickster, and he says, "Come here! Behold! This is the truth!" and he hands you another lie. But it helped tremendously. Both the lies cancelled each other.' And of course, when you come against the lie created by a Buddha, you cannot win. Your lie is very amateurish. When a Buddha lies, it is perfect and professional. He lies very knowingly and deliberately.
A magician performed brilliantly in the salon of an ocean liner. On this ship was a parrot who hated the magician. Every time the magician did a trick, the parrot would scream, 'Phoney! Phoney! Take him away!'
In the course of the voyage, the ship sank. The parrot and the magician ended up on a long plank. One day passed, they said nothing -- they were enemies. Two days passed, still they said nothing. Finally the parrot could down his suspicions no longer. He glared at the magician and squeaked, 'All right, wise guy. You and
your damn tricks! What did you do with the ship?'
One day it is going to happen between you and me... the whole ship, the whole ship you call sansar, the world. What I am doing is just sabotaging.
OSHO
